calling people running ford radius arms

I'm in the middle of swapping a hpd44 with extended radius arms. I plan on bending the arms right at the wedge so the hiem end of the arms are 6" apart, for less bind. I'm having a hard time getting a solid measurement on the angle that ford used for the arms to go inboard. I don't want to bend this thing blind and screw it up. I tried measuring with the arms on and one side was 10* greater angle than the other, and with the arms off it was damn near impossible to get anything consistent. Can someone give me a hand?

anyone?

Pics would help understand what you are talking about.

You don't really need to measure the angle. Just build the arms in-place. I cut the "C" part of the arms off mine, and bolted them to the axle with the bushings in place. Then I very carefully positioned the axle where I wanted it under the vehicle. Then I built my frame-side tabs. Then all I had to do was make a piece of tube to fill in the gap between the "C" and the frame mount tabs. Does that make sense? Rather than measuring everything and building the arms to those specs and hoping I got everything perfect and they fit, I just built them using the vehicle as a jig.

that's a pretty simple way of doing it, but I'm using already extended arms and planned on notching the inside of the I-beam directly behind the "C" and heating and bending the arms inward, then gusseting and boxing that bend. I just can't figure out how to get a consistent/accurate angle measurement with these damn things.

Send a PM to this guy: Pete M
He's running the radius arms on his MJ to full width Ford axles.
I think there's probably a build thread over on www.comancheclub.com

whitneyj said:

that's a pretty simple way of doing it, but I'm using already extended arms and planned on notching the inside of the I-beam directly behind the "C" and heating and bending the arms inward, then gusseting and boxing that bend. I just can't figure out how to get a consistent/accurate angle measurement with these damn things.

Click to expand...

There is no reason you can't use your method of notching, heating, and bending while the control arm is bolted onto the axle, and just bend it until the end is where you want it to be on the chassis. You may melt your bushing and have to replace it. Or take a rough measurement, bend it, bolt it up and see if you need to bend it a little more or a little less. You could use good ol' trial and error to get it bent the way you want in less time than you've spent pondering how to measure it exactly. It sounds to me like you're making a lot of concessions on this build because you want to use something that you happen to have laying around.

You might be able to do something like this but roll the bends in!

Rockmonkey- It's not so much that it's what I have laying around, I just didn't measure the radius arms before I bought them, now I'm trying to mend a bad decision. I also need to keep the costs a little on the low side of this build. I'm lucky to have let the wife let me get this far with it!
As far as bending it, that's probably what I'll end up doing. I've got a set of poly bushings laying around that wouldn't mind getting toasted. I'll just have to do the trial and error thing. I tend to look to far into how to get things done, then just actually doing it.

RCP Phx-aren't those farmermatts'?